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The Rotten Wooden Room

by Cat Galaxy Studio

2021
Adventuron

(based on 3 ratings)
3 reviews3 members have played this game.

About the Story

The Grove of Magic is nearby. Try to find it and save the unicorn.

Made for the Text Adventure Literacy Jam.

Awards

Ratings and Reviews

5 star:
(0)
4 star:
(0)
3 star:
(1)
2 star:
(1)
1 star:
(1)
Average Rating: based on 3 ratings
Number of Reviews Written by IFDB Members: 3
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
A collection of random genres and puzzles with some fun parts, April 30, 2021
Related reviews: 15-30 minutes

This was part of the Text Adventure Literacy Jam. It starts off in a creepy, horror-type room, then moves into more fantasy or abstraction.

Each room has generally forgiving puzzles, and overall I generally enjoyed the atmosphere. However, there was no real connection between anything, and there were a few odd bugs (for instance, a door in one room affected passage between two other rooms in what seems like a buggy way).

I don't think a game has to have a coherent narrative to be fun, and a game doesn't have to have clever puzzles to be fun, but I feel like this game could use something more than it has now before it is entirely enjoyable.

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The other rooms aren't rotten, though, which is nice., July 12, 2025*
by Andrew Schultz (Chicago)
Related reviews: TALP 2021

The Rotten Wooden Room is a relatively linear game where, fortunately, there are much more exciting places to visit than the room where you start. It's got nice graphics, and it's pretty clear what to do. The fantasy and text adventuring troops are pretty standard here. You find a pickaxe to dig at gems, you give magic items to magic beings and eventually, you have a happily-ever-after ending. It's quite pleasant, and although there is one bug that had me baffled, it's well organized enough and you don't have to guess the verb. The place with the bug, the author simply misplaced a door in another room, so you go to unlock the door where it should be, and it says it isn't there. It's a puzzle of its own, which isn't terribly unwelcome, since nothing else overtaxes your mind.

It was written for TALP, and the tutorial bit is adequate, explaining what to do and how to get started, and it helps you in bits and pieces all the way through. While it's not necessary, it's still refreshing to see this sort of follow-up. The author cares. Though it does come off feeling like a first work, because the author has the basics of what a text adventure is down, and they don't make any big mistakes, but besides the bit at the end which I found very nice, it doesn't really start to achieve personality. It's still a pleasant journey.

And it's a relatively linear one. There are only two rooms that branch, and as you'd expect, you find items in each dead end that help you move on other places. You're not going to get lost here. You can even dispense with examining and such a lot of the time, once you know what to do, and it's not hard to find your way through again. You wind up making one guardian flea and making another happy with a gift. There's rudimentary dialogue.

I'm glad the author stopped by to write this, even if it isn't a world beater. It's interesting to see the sort of things people with a more artistic background come up with (they have a nice portfolio of other stuff on itch,) as I sure couldn't brave going into an art jam for drawing stuff. I think this is much better than what I'd be able to do. When I replayed this, I remembered some of the images very quickly, such as the castle with the clouds. So while it may not blow you away, it's more enjoyable and has more substance than most games that place low. It's a bit of a shame the title made it seem potentially dreary, because it really isn't.

* This review was last edited on July 13, 2025
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1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
The Rotten Wooden Game, April 11, 2021

In the very first location, the word "wooden" is highlighted in red. Normally you would highlight interactable nouns, not adjectives, so I was already off-kilter. Heading down into some tunnels below the shack, the word "hole" is in blue and "smelly mud" is in red. This time, you can interact with the mud, so that confirms the "wooden" highlight is a bug? The game is very inconsistent throughout in its use of red and blue highlights, which is a big problem for a game with such a thin implementation. It needs a ton of additional verb-synonyms and noun-synonyms to be implemented before it's even close to playable: even then, there is zero story to speak of, and the graphics are straight-up bad: why is a mole drawn as a stick-man?

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This is version 1 of this page, edited by Edo on 10 April 2021 at 8:59am. - View Update History - Edit This Page - Add a News Item - Delete This Page